With drama behind him, McKinnie arrived in camp prepared this year

Bryant McKinnie looked good at the Baltimore Ravens’ minicamp last week. Coach John Harbaugh said he looked good, McKinnie said he felt good—good enough, in fact, to publicly, on the record, take aim at a daunting target for the upcoming season.

“Right now, I’m a lot more focused,’’ he said after the last practice of minicamp in Owings Mills, Md., “so I can have a good year and be the best left tackle in the league.’’

Bryant McKinnie was a non-factor for the Baltimore Ravens during last year's regular season, but was dominant at left tackle in the playoffs. (AP Photo)

Pardon? “That’s my goal.’’

And how will he know he’s accomplished that? “When people turn on film and see that I’m dominating,’’ he explained, as matter-of-factly as he’d stated his goal. “I feel like I’m gonna be better than everybody else this year.’’

It’s actually not outrageous—McKinnie does turn 34 early in the season, but during many of his nine years with the Vikings he was in the conversation about the NFL’s best left tackles. That was a long time ago, though, and since the end of the 2011 lockout—when the Vikings released him in early August and the Ravens picked him up in late August—his weight and conditioning have been constant issues.

It didn’t stop last year, either, not by a long shot. The Ravens season could reasonably be divided into two parts: before McKinnie got into shape and started playing regularly, and after. The “after” included the run to the Super Bowl in which McKinnie was brilliant at left tackle—but the “before” encompassed the entire previous offseason and most of the regular season, when he and Harbaugh staged a running battle (no pun intended) over whether he was in shape to play.

Last week, though, McKinnie looked much closer to the best-case scenario the Ravens envisioned when they picked him up two years earlier. Harbaugh noticed.

“Bryant did a really good job. He moved really well in this camp, as well as he moved at the end of the year last year when he started practicing so well and playing so well,’’ he said. “And he’s healthy, and he’ll continue to work on conditioning; that’s for all of us, that’s a year-round life-round proposition, but he seems to be very committed. I love the way he’s playing.’’

McKinnie is currently listed at 354 pounds; he said earlier in camp that he’s about 10 pounds less what he was at the same time last year. Yes, the minicamp in June 2012 is part of his redemption story, as he readily admits.

“This time last year I didn’t even participate. So yeah, definitely, I feel a lot better in minicamp,’’ he said with a laugh.

The Ravens held him out of all workouts then as he tried to shed weight and get in shape. Somehow, things managed to get worse from there. He was absent from the start of training camp with a back injury that had the team in the dark. As cutdown day for the regular season approached, he and the Ravens couldn’t agree on a restructured contract, and McKinnie spent a day tweeting his views on the negotiations, including this one that grabbed the league’s attention: “Decision is made! I’m gone!”

He wasn’t. They agreed on a pay cut later that day, but he did not start a single game in the regular season and the Ravens’ line remained unsettled all year.

But Harbaugh finally became satisfied with his conditioning late in the season, and started him in the playoffs. He was dominant in all four games, and the loaded but up-and-down offense clicked from then on, right through the Super Bowl win over the 49ers.

Suddenly, McKinnie was back to being an asset, and after drawing interest from other teams (including Miami and San Diego), he re-signed last month. Until then, he said, he felt as unsettled as he had felt in the previous two offseasons.

“I always wanted to give the Ravens an option to match whatever the other teams offered,’’ McKinnie said, “so I would tell my agent to check back and see what the Ravens had going on and we’ll decide from there.’’

With that, it appears that the history of preseason chaos between him and the team is just that, history. In fact, he’s a relative isle of stability on a still-shuffling line. Retired Matt Birk is being replaced at center by second-year Gino Gradkowski, just-acquired center A.Q. Shipley will compete for time as well, Pro Bowl right guard Marshal Yanda is recovering from offseason shoulder surgery, and Keleche Osemele is settling in permanently at left guard after playing parts of last season in McKinnie’s tackle spot.

So it’s a good time for McKinnie, now the oldest player on the roster, to have a career revival.

“Physically I feel like I’m 26, so that’s a good thing,’’ he said, laughing again, “but I feel really good this year.’’

Good enough to be the best in the NFL at his position, he said. Not carrying that extra drama around with him should help.